


Rip us apart at the seams

by Fatale (femme)



Series: Ave Atque Vale [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Vampire Alec Lightwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 20:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13198212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme/pseuds/Fatale
Summary: Magnus knows dark magic, the kind that would erode his soul and taint Alec forever. He closes his eyes and wills it to answer his call, feels the oily magic sluggishly respond, creeping into his bones and settling there.au: alec gets turned into a vampire.





	Rip us apart at the seams

**Author's Note:**

> season 1 of shadowhunters didn't interest me much so i skipped around a lot. feel free to let me know if i totally messed up the lore on vampires, but like, it won't change this fic. this i just wrote for the lulz.

 

 

 

 

  
Magnus had always assumed that the moment Alexander died, he would know it, would feel his soul splintering with the enormity of his loss. The sky would darken, the world would shift on its axis.

In truth, he doesn’t actually notice.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jace cry out and fall, clutching at his side and Clary rushing over to him. Magnus is busy fighting a Ravener demon, avoiding its nasty poison teeth, pooling his magic in his hands and letting it fly, until all the demons are gone. Today has been a hell of a day. A nest of vamps breaking the accords and snatching humans, a group of Ravener demons. Almost feels like the apocalypse. Again.

Magnus lowers his arms, shaking with fatigue, magic all but spent. Still, he turns to see if he can help Jace, then--

Isabelle screams. At the end of the alley, she’s holding Alec, crumpled in her lap, motionless. And Magnus _knows_.

   
\---

 

Magnus could rip open a portal, drag up a Greater Demon from hell and bargain for Alec’s soul -- his magic sputters weakly in protest. He could get Catarina, but she wouldn’t do this kind of magic, knows that whatever they bring back would not be entirely Alec. Magnus knows dark magic, the kind that would erode his soul and taint Alec forever. He closes his eyes and wills it to answer his call, feels the oily magic sluggishly respond, creeping into his bones and settling there.

“He’s had vampire blood,” Raphael says tonelessly, startling Magnus. He had quite forgotten he was there, leaning against a wall, in indifference or exhaustion, Magnus can’t tell. Usually with Raphael, it’s a little of both. “Earlier when we fighting the rogue nest -- it was an accident.”

Izzy swipes at her eyes impatiently, suddenly all business. “How long do we have to decide?”

“You can’t seriously be considering this, Iz,” Jace says. “He wouldn’t want to live like that.”

“He’s our big brother,” she says, body bowed over Alec protectively. Her mascara’s running down her face, eyes dark, a modern-day pieta etched in streetlight in a dirty alley.

She turns to Magnus. “Will he have you?” Izzy asks.

Magnus knows what she’s asking without being told. Is Magnus in it for the long haul? They’ve been dating less than a year, but when all of Alec’s family has died, all of his friends turned to dust, will he have Magnus? She won’t sentence her brother to a lifetime of loneliness, not when he’s lived the majority of his life like that already.

“ _Yes_ ,” Magnus says easily.

“Then do it,” Isabelle says to Raphael.

   
\---

 

Alec wakes disoriented, clawing at the earth. He’s gasping with lungs that don’t need air, all his familiar runes have faded to silvery scars. He looks scared and lost and Magnus breathes for the first time since he saw him in the alley.

Alec’s skin, always so pale and lovely, is so light it’s nearly transparent. His eyes are large, dark and hungry. “Why?” he croaks.

“I’m sorry,” Magnus says, but doesn’t really mean it. When faced with the enormity of Alec’s death, the moment he’d thought he’d been prepared for, spending an eternity with Alec hating him had seemed better than not having Alec at all.

Magnus would do it again.

Izzy and Clary rush to help Alec up and Raphael offers to take him in since Alec can hardly go to the institute like this. He’ll keep tabs on him, keep him safe from other vampires for the time being.

It’s cowardly, Magnus knows, but he doesn’t follow them. Alec won’t want him there when he gets his bearings, feeds for the first time. If Magnus can avoid looking at what he’s done to Alec for one more day, then he’ll take it.

Eventually, Alec will forgive him. He has to. It’s who Alec is -- generous of weakness in those he loves, the kind of forgiveness he can’t ever seem to extend to himself. It’s not in his nature to hold grudges. Time is all he and Alexander have now, he can afford to wait.

He sits down next to the yawning grave that held Alec, cradled him close and brought him back to life. It feels like hallowed ground. His heart thuds sickly in his chest. He wonders if Alec can hear it now.

  
\---

   
Three days later, Magnus stops by the Hotel Dumort because he suddenly feels the need to talk to Raphael. It doesn’t hurt that somewhere in this grimy glamour, Alec is sitting around with a bunch of hundred-year-old vampires in brocade smoking jackets waxing nostalgia about paper money and other obscure things, or whatever it is vampires do between drinking blood and threatening people.

“You’re doing well for yourself,” Magnus says, eyeing the newest chandelier, low hanging and objectively gaudy. Not that Magnus is one to judge -- he’s personally never met a chandelier he didn’t like. He once owned a London townhouse that had fifty.

“Why don’t you ask what you came here to,” Raphael says, lounging insouciantly in a gold metallic club chair. To the point, as always.

“How is Alexander?”

Raphael shrugs. “He’s been keeping to himself. Mostly goes out with Simon during the night.”

Magnus feels his eyebrows kiss his hairline. “Simon?”

“It’s like he doesn’t trust us,” Raphael says, vaguely amused.

From the other room, there’s a loud crash and Raphael stands. “Fucking baby vampires,” Raphael says by way of apology, rolling his eyes. It’s Raphael’s fault he’s a good leader, errant vampires have been flocking to his clan, seeking asylum from less tolerant Institutes and less crazy leaders. “Your shadowhunter is fine, just needs some time to adjust,” he throws over his shoulder on his way out of the room.

Magnus can count two lies in that statement: Alec is not a shadowhunter, not anymore, and he may not even be _his_.

He takes stock of his conundrum. So what, his boyfriend’s a vampire and Magnus has no idea where they stand and if they’re in fact, boyfriends anymore. He’s been down this uncertain road with another vampire before, ironically, in this same spot.

Although Camille and Alec are so intrinsically different, it’s laughable to think Magnus could have truly loved them both. Camille and Alec are themselves, have always been, whether Magnus wanted to acknowledge it or not. Alec is steadfast where Camille was changeable, Camille was cruel where Alec is kind. Rinse, repeat. If they haven’t changed, it stands to reason that what has fundamentally shifted, is Magnus himself.

   
\---

   
Jace is one of many to stop by, the fifth or sixth of all acquaintances both profound and casual that he and Alec have in common. Magnus suspects that Alec is sending them, if the mailman is any indication. Magnus has been living here on and off for years, and never once before yesterday, has the mailman inquired about his health, his general state of mind, and if he remembered his dentist appointment on Monday.

It’s both disconcerting and comforting that so many people worry about the state of his gums, except he’s pretty sure it’s mostly one tall fellow with a Type A personality exacerbated by being undead and nothing better to do.

“Sooooo,” Jace says, looking out of place, despite the fact that he was, at one regrettable time, Magnus’ roommate and perpetual cockblock.

“How’s Alexander?”

“You know Alec, he’s not really a talk about our feelings kind of guy.” Jace scratches his neck, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t really know how he’s doing. He mostly stares at walls and seems -- sad, I guess. Not all that different from usual.” Jace frowns.

A thought so large and terrible that Magnus has difficulty putting it into words occurs to him. “He wants to live, right?” He laughs, but even to his own ears, it sounds strained, slightly hysterical. “He’s not going to make some kind of mad dash out into the sun?”

For the first time since Alec died, Magnus feels a cold sliver fear. He’s given Alec the chance to live, but Alec may not want to live like this, as the antithesis of all he’s been his entire life.

“Do you think he’ll choose to live?”

Jace rubs his faded parabatai rune absently.

“Alec is a survivor,” he says, finally. “He won’t leave you.”

   
\---

   
Magnus sees Alec crossing the street, a shadow moving silently through the loud and bustling holiday crowds. Without an invisibility rune, people’s eyes track Alec, a tall handsome man who moves just a little too smoothly, touching nothing, still not quite part of the world.

Magnus is used to Alec moving with a certain type of grace, a grace born of sweat and discipline, of repeating the same exercises so often that it becomes effortless, second nature. But this is different; it’s instinctive, evolutionary, nature making him an apex predator, and the perceptive instinctively shy away. Each time it happens, Magnus sees Alec flinch.

Alec will be aware of him by now, even in a large crowd, as he always has been, his eyes searching restlessly for him as Magnus hurries back to his loft.

   
\---

 

“WHO DARES DISTURB- oh hello, Isabelle. Come on up.”

“Nice greeting,” she says when she reaches his door, red patent leather heels echoing in the stairwell.

“I got one of those camera doorbells,” Magnus says. “Clary ordered it for me on Amazon. It’s great, helps keep the riff-raff out.”

“I thought that’s what the wards were for?”

“Everybody has off days.” Magnus invites her inside and she perches on the arm of a chair, crossing her impressive legs. Not much makes her nervous, but she’s swinging her foot restlessly.

Ah. So she’s here about Alec.

“I know he’s being an asshole, but you know.” She won’t meet his eyes. “It’s a lot to deal with, our parents won’t speak to him. He just needs some time.”

He’s no longer a shadowhunter, is actually actively disliked by most, treated with the same vague mistrust that he once regarded downworlders with. Magnus understands all too well what it’s like to suddenly be hated for what you are, what you never asked for or wanted to be. Magnus killed his stepfather; Alec is sulking in the bowels of the Hotel Dumort and apparently, going to hipster gigs with Simon.

“He forgave me,” Izzy says.

“He has to, you’re his sister. Family means more to Alexander than anything.”

“It does.”

“I’m not his family.”

Her face, when she peers at him, is inscrutable. “Is that what you think,” she says.

   
\---

 

In the end, it’s not really as long as Magnus supposes it would be. Time tends to be relative to immortals. Ragnor had once been mad about Magnus forgetting his birthday for _years_. But Alec is new to it, has not seen friends and lovers age while he stands still, forever youthful, a solitary and steadfast plot point on a constantly shifting graph.

Magnus steps through a portal, bone-tired and muscles aching, feeling every part of his four hundred years. The last century has been exceedingly tough. His magic’s getting stronger but he is noticeably slower to recover. Magnus has always known he would not live forever and drawn comfort from it. Eventually, something would end his life. He’s just always hoped it wouldn’t be something really embarrassing like slipping in the shower and breaking his neck. He’s installed shower floor grips and avoided autoerotic asphyxiation for the last hundred years _just in case_.

It’s not that Magnus hasn’t allowed himself to idly imagine keeping Alec with him forever, but it had always been a passing dream, impossible in the face of hard reality. Shadowhunters have a habit of dying young. And Magnus had made peace with having as many years with Alexander as possible, until laying him to rest in the City of Bones, where one day, at the end of his long life, Magnus might once join him in whatever afterlife accepted killers and half-demon spawn.

Brave new world for both of them, it seems. But that book was a dystopia and Magnus only enjoys irony when it happens to other people.

Alec is sitting in his chair, a silent statue among all of Magnus’ artifacts.

“Can I get you a drink?” Magnus asks and before Alec has a chance to answer, Magnus waves his hand and a red drink appears in Alec’s hand. A Bloody Mary made with real blood.

Alec smiles faintly looking down at his drink. “You know I hate food puns.”

“Indulge me.”

“Don’t I always?” Alec says and takes a sip.

“More or less.” Magnus sits across from him, his own drink in hand. “How have you been?”

“Okay, I guess. Sleeping all day, wandering around all night, learning how to glamour folks, which I’m pretty shitty at, in case you were wondering. I’m being taught how to -- by Simon, no less--” Alec’s mouth twitches, “be a Child of the Night.”

“Vampires can be very dramatic,” Magnus sighs.

“They can,” Alec agrees. The solitary lamp next to him throws the sharpened angles of his face into high relief, highlighting his cheekbones and mouth, the rest hidden in darkness.

The shadows suit him, as they always did.

Alec rubs the back of his neck and Magnus feels a swell of tenderness for the familiar gesture. “Sorry I haven’t talked to you -- it’s been crazy. I just, I can’t be a shadowhunter anymore and I don’t--”

At the beginning of their relationship, Magnus had once asked Alec what he wanted to do with his life. Alec had shrugged, said run the Institute, die. Or fight, die, and not run the Institute. All depressing options, in Magnus’ opinion. It breaks his heart just a little bit: Alec, who has had his entire crappy life mapped out, does not know what to do with it now that he seems to have so much more of it.

Alec sighs, looks down at his hands, long fingers spread out over his knees, like they belong to a stranger. Magnus has watched those hands kill things, has kissed and held those hands, put them in unspeakable places. Magnus loves everything about them and they’ll never be foreign to him.

He kneels down at Alec’s feet, uncomfortably close to begging, but then he’s always been a fool for love. “Don’t give up, please. I could take you anywhere, we could go anywhere, at any time. There’s a world of beauty out there for you, Alexander.”

Alec looks surprised. “I know that, I’m not -- it’s fine.”

Magnus feels a bit lost, he sits back on his heels. “You don’t want to die?”

“Technically, I already have? I mean, what’s done is done.” Alec shrugs.

It’s not Whitman, Magnus thinks, but most of what Alec says tends to have the elegance of simplicity and unadorned truth.

“I know why you did it and I’m not mad--I mean, I was, but not really at you. I know why you let me turn, why Izzy and Jace did, too. If it had been one of them, I think maybe I would have done the same thing.”

“But you haven’t been avoiding _them_.”

Alec sets his drink down, scratches his neck. “You seemed to want space. I saw you outside, you know, and you turned and left. I thought you wanted some time to get used to all this.” It’s his turn to look slightly embarrassed. “ I’ve been sending people to check up on you just in case.”

“Noted and received, but I had to reschedule my dentist appointment. You know, greater demons, splintering hell dimensions and all.”

“The mailman will be really disappointed.”

“I’ll send him a fruit basket.”

Alec leans down, bridging the gap between them. “I have to do _something_ , I can’t just be your boyfriend, Magnus. Laying around in bed all day, waiting for you to get home and take me out for the evening.”

 _Oh_. The thought isn’t without merit, Magnus thinks. “And would you--get yourself dressed up all pretty, waiting for me?” Magnus asks, studying Alec through lowered eyelashes. He runs a hand up Alec’s thigh.

Magnus is regretfully sure Alec would flush, if he still could. He’s going to miss that, but the tradeoff is more than worth it.

“Stop distracting me,” Alec says weakly.

“You know I do hate to be a distraction,” Magnus says, rising to his feet gracefully.

“I can hear your blood from here,” Alec says, and licks his lips. “I’ve never been able to figure out how to stop wanting you, even when I thought I had to. I think--I think you’re it for me.”

Something quivers low in his belly. Tension he’s been carrying around since this thing began - hell, since he met Alec - unravels like a knot pulled too tight and suddenly unbound, smoothing itself out, diffusing warmth throughout his body and leaving only gentle release. Magnus knew he loved Alec and knew it was mutual, but he hadn’t known until this very moment that they were both in it for the long haul. Maybe that’s why he’s been kind of avoiding Alec and Alec has been kind of avoiding him, neither willing to admit their doubts, but here they are. It took them fucking forever to get here, but Magnus finds he doesn’t really mind.

“Alexander, I was always yours,” Magnus says as he heads towards his bedroom, stripping off layers of clothes as he goes, carelessly tossing them on the floor.

The last article of clothing hits the ground. “So come and get me,” he challenges Alec.

Alec follows.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> “Have you found any answers?” Magnus asks.
> 
> “Simon thinks we should start an all vampire band.”
> 
> “Do you have any musical talent?”
> 
> “Not even a little. I’ve been assured I have a lucrative job as a vampire bouncer any time I want it.”
> 
> “It’s a career.”
> 
> “Not a good one,” Alec says. “But I didn’t want to spend any more time away from you.”


End file.
